An airplane is at height of #10000# feet. At what angle (rounded to whole degree), it must descend if the airport is #50# miles away?

1 Answer
Shwetank Mauria
Mar 25, 2017

Airplane must descend at #2^@#.

Explanation:

As one mile is #1760# yards and each yard #3# feet, we have #1760xx3=5280# feet in a mile and

airport is #5280xx50=264000# feet away.enter image source here

Hence tangent (equal to opposite side divided by adjacent side) of angle formed is #tanalpha=10000/264000=0.03788#

and looking at tables (or scientific calculator) angle #alpha=2.17^@#, which rounded to degrees is #2^@#.

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